1. Field of the Disclosure
This disclosure relates to guitar bridges, and more particularly to an offset compensated telecaster (or tele) saddle for a guitar bridge.
2. Description of the Related Art
The Fender Telecaster (or Tele), is the world's first commercially successful solid-body electric guitar, and was introduced for national distribution (as the Broadcaster) in the autumn of 1950. In its classic form, the guitar is simply constructed, with the neck and fingerboard comprising a single piece of maple, screwed to an ash or alder body inexpensively jigged with flat surfaces on the front and back. The hardware includes two single coil pickups controlled by a three-way selector switch, and one each of volume and tone controls. The bridge has three adjustable saddles, with strings doubled up on each.
Traditionally, telecaster saddles were made of 5/16″ raw brass bar stock or ¼″ steel bar stock (i.e., cylindrical stock) from 1950 until the mid-50's (roughly 1955). The saddles were straight across (i.e., had a smooth surface) and did not have any grooves for the string to rest in. This caused at least two major issues for conventional telecaster saddles.
Firstly, these saddles provided no compensation for intonation. Several factors affect fretted instrument intonation, including depth of the string slots in the nut, bridge saddle position, the position of the frets themselves, and the technique of the musician. On fretted string instruments, pushing a string against a fret, aside from raising the string's pitch because it shortens the string, also causes a slight secondary raise in pitch because pushing the string increases its tension. If the instrument does not compensate for this with a slight increase in the distance from the bridge saddle to the fret, the note sounds sharp.
Secondly, with conventional tele saddles, strings had a tendency to slip and fall into the set screw holes or between the threads of the set screws (especially in the high-E string), which would cause an undesirous “sitar”-like buzzing effect, or in some cases would break the string. Moreover, the saddles were not well adapted for B-benders or Bigsby users, which required smooth travel of the strings over the saddles as the string(s) are further tensioned.
Fender switched to using threaded bar stock (e.g., a threaded cylinder) in the late 50's/early 60's. The saddles made from threaded bar stock did provide the saddle a string path, but because the threads were angled (due to conventional thread angle of the threaded bar stock), these saddles did not provide a straight path for the string, resulting in, for example, incorrect string spacing. Additionally, due to the location of the set screws in these saddles, the high-E string would still fall into the set screw hole and/or be pinched in the threading of the set screw. These saddles also did not compensate for intonation.
The issues the traditional tele style saddles present are issues for any telecaster player with a vintage or vintage style telecaster. There are a number of compensated telecaster saddles made through the years, for example, from ones that are just an angled standard style saddle or ones that have compensation built into a crest on the top. While some of these designs worked, some did not, they all had certain “design flaws” that people would just live with. These design flaws include: (1) almost none fixed the issue of the string falling into the set screw hole; (2) despite having “compensation,” the intonation was never actually correct; (3) certain saddles having the compensation built into the crest either did not have a long life (e.g., the string would dig into the sharper peek causing the string to buzz, or in some cases break), the intonation was not very accurate and/or these saddles did not look aesthetically pleasing while on the guitar; (4) the saddles included set screws that rode on a razor's edge and would cut into the bridge plate; (6) none of these saddles work well with B benders or Bigsby equipped guitars; (7) none of these saddles is easily conducive to left hand guitars without the need for purchasing extra saddles to make a set; and (8) none of these saddles works well with higher action, such as a guitar with a shallow neck set or with a tremolo system, and would buzz and become even more inaccurate in intonation.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved saddle for a telecaster (or tele) style guitar bridge that solves these above-noted deficiencies, provides improved performance and improved compensation for intonation.